


The First Order

by AGreatUnkindness



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-24 17:27:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22001683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGreatUnkindness/pseuds/AGreatUnkindness
Summary: A history of the first Order of the Phoenix and the death of Auror Dorcas Meadowes. OC's and book canon spoilers.





	1. Prologue

Philippa waited until the man was gone from the street. She walked backwards from the window and even though she bumped into a table on her way to the kitchen and even though she was alone she still stood still at the noise she had made and continued to stare at the front door, her eyes darting to the window. When she reached the kitchen, she opened a small side door and crouched to get in the small space. She moved a small slide out of the way and behind it a small landing in front of a staircase. She squeezed herself through and moved as silently as she could through the old creaky building. The stair opened up to a catwalk and the backs of other small doors that she knew had long been sealed on the occupants' side. She rapped on one of the doors and made her way through without waiting for an answer. She found herself in a cozy carpeted room all dark burgundy and light wood and light streaming into the attic room. She padded through the room reflexively pulling a cobweb out of her way even though the path had been clear and there were no spiders that made their way there. She cleaned the way herself. She maintained the way herself. She felt at home in the old woman's house and made a small call so as not to startle her. They had agreed the way would be used for emergencies.

The old woman making tea in her own kitchen stood still to listen. The girl. She pulled out another teacup. She knew the house sounds before the door opened upstairs. She knew the difference between a cat and something several times its side. When Philippa cleaned she was less careful and quiet but Robin didn't think it necessary to tell the girl that. She had lived here long enough to know also, that the other tenants would chalk the noise up to old house sounds like the marbles in the pipes, the creaking, the yawning in the walls from a tired frame. She didn't hear the faint click of the door or Philippa's footsteps but a small whistle as if from a bird. A small, high-pitched, faint tremolo. By the time the girl started descending the carpeted stairs the old woman was passing with a teacup looking up curious.

"I thought I might have heard a nightingale," She said chuckling. "Tea?"

"Sorry," the girl said. "I didn't want to startle you,"

She wasn't really a girl the old woman observed. But then the old woman wasn't really old, she thought. The landlady knew someone might come for Philippa again. When she rented the flat, Robin sensing she had one last question, opened her small, warm landlady face and asked patiently if there was anything else Philippa would be needing to let the flat. "Doors", the girl had said unflinching. It had startled the landlady. Philippa would have said it eventually, she had had too. She could fake the length of a stay, she thought but, Robin had let rooms and flats and houses her entire life. She knew what a woman running away looked like. She knew a patchwork renter's history when she saw one. She called the other references. All on time but broke every lease. Every single one of them and over such a short period of time. The next time Philippa came back, Robin asked and the woman told her. Not everything she was sure but it took her back all the same. It startled her, the woman's candor and resolve and that she could articulate what the problem was. Either she didn't recognize how disarming it was or didn't care or was sick.

"The doors. What did you mean, doors?" Robin asked.

"To get out of. Like a door," Philippa replied flatly.

Robin could sense the woman's sarcasm even as she told the landlady, not in so many words, that she needed to run away but something about Philippa reminded Robin of a younger version of herself or rather, the person she had always imagined she could become: clever and unafraid.

Anyways, Robin had always been told that crazy people didn't have a sense of humor so she let Philippa the flat. The woman stayed and when Robin was certain, she showed Philippa the path on her move-in date.

"All the others were bricked up. You can check if you like but you'll see once you get inside. This flat and mine were left."

Robin started talking about her life as a little girl. Her parents had acquired a flat for sale in those days which was unheard of at the time. In England? Her mother worked at the resorts and knew that the white man selling it was trying to drive down housing prices when other Jamaicans moved in. Robin's mother didn't care and neither did her father and so they purchased the flat that Philippa would let and then the one next to it and the next until they owned the entire building. The white man who sold it could then buy the buildings next to it when the property value sank and in less than a generation, the property value would go back up and he could resell those same buildings for an unreal sum. Philippa listened impassive. Her face still. The landlady assumed she was boring the woman and stopped mid-sentence.

"Go on," Philippa said.

"Oh, well, then they…" Robin had lost her train of thought.

"The London flat". Philippa said.

"Well," the landlady went on tentative, looking to the floor and Philippa for reassurance and instead was met with her stillness. Robin thought she droned on as she got to how her parents acquired so many more places. Rented out just for blacks originally but then someone kicked up a fuss as if anyone else but the islanders had been knocking down the doors and her parents had barred anyone for renting in the first place. Robin wrang her hands together. Philippa's expression didn't change. It was made all the stranger by the men moving the woman's furniture in. They were standing in the kitchen making a soft commotion all around. When one would ask Philippa a question she would answer without changing expression directing them through a home she'd never been in as if she had lived there the entire time. That she was listening to everything around her at once and had divined the very essence of the flat and the people in it at the time. Robin felt as if she had bored the woman long enough and that Philippa would rather unpack in her stoic peace and yet when the landlady paused in a strange place or made to leave Philippa urged her on.

It made the landlady nervous and she found it off-putting but reminded herself that Philippa was running away after all. Or maybe not. It crossed Robin's mind that Philippa might be the problem in whatever story she did not tell the landlady but brushed the thought aside. She continued her story getting to the part where she was finally old enough to have her own place.

"Well anyway, my parents moved to live where my flat is now and I lived here." Philippa smiled and nodded.

The woman nodded. Philippa had heard this story somewhere before, that's how the she acted. Maybe the old woman had told it already but when? Maybe she was getting old. They were sitting in silence now. The movers getting things placed upstairs. The sound of the heavy feet something the landlady could focus on. She smiled at Philippa less assured. Robin felt like somewhere a clock was ticking at an unnaturally high volume.

"When they leave, the door?"  
"Yes!" the landlady said too cheerful given the quietness that sat in front of Philippa's question. Robin was just thankful to have a reason to make a noise, some evidence that she was still alive and hadn't slipped into death and that the remainder of eternity wasn't just sitting here in silence forever.

This felt very familiar. Robin had a tenant not unlike this one. Several. As she got older, she managed her parents' properties and met many tenants off their rocker. This one paid in coins or tried to barter in bread knuckles, this one hit his wife, this one cooked cat meat said this nosy neighbor whose cat was missing but also who cooked food that smelled like it might have been cat meat... Robin had heard it all, seen it all, fixed so much of it and it shocked so many people to learn that this small woman managed the properties and even owned some of her own. The old woman sighed.

"I'll be back later to show you though I cant go in myself anymore." she smiled as much to herself as to Philippa. I am old. This is a little girl, Robin thought. The Philippa nodded and ushered Robin to the front door.

"Until then," said Philippa who stood at the door as if she would shut it even as the movers brought in the remainder of her things.

When the landlady looked behind her Philippa was gone from the doorway. Robin looked at the expanse of the flat and walked to her own from the outside. When she got back she padded up the stairs. Everything still there she snorted. Still the same place, the same warmth, the same smell. She inhaled deeply and went upstairs, opened the door to the attic upstairs and checked the door. Still closed. She slowly crouched down and opened the door peering in and looked both ways. Same as ever. A little dusty but overall ok. She smoothed a cobweb out of her hair as she went back into the room. Robin sat on the floor cross legged. Since she wasn't thinking about it, she got up much smoother than she got on the floor in the first place. She straightened her skirt with a mission on her mind. She went to the drawer and pulled out a set of keys of the many, went back to the little door and locked it for the first time in a very long time. She would visit the girl tomorrow and let her know about the door in her kitchen. She would let her know about the path to her flat and her door and listen and decide and compose herself before hand. She would be prepared and not look like a little, old fool next time. Would she tell Philippa about the war years, the old, old war years when they built flats like this so that neighbors could hide in the walls and- no. Robin was old but, also knew that, for all those years, some people were younger but had lived more, so to speak. She would leave her encyclopedic knowledge of crawl spaces and wars and architecture and property law out of it. And they would go from there.

Robin went to the kitchen to grab the second cup of tea and went upstairs to sit in the small attic room with the young woman. She set the teacup on the table and stirred her own, sipping quietly. By now she was used to this girl and her quietness.

"My friend has died," Said Philippa in the same even tone she used when she first met the landlady.

The old woman's heart lurched. It wasn't fair but it was life. Young people died young too.

"I knew but someone just came with the news. This was the emergency." Philippa drew in deep measured breaths into her nose before folding over.

If Robin hadn't been that old she might not have been able to tell that Philippa was crying at all. When Philippa finally looked up at the ceiling wiping her eyes, the only evidence that she had been crying were her red eyes and sniffling her voice remained strangely even, even monotone. Of course her friend's death was bad but what did that mean she already knew? Robin wondered. Of course, that wasn't the emergency. The landlady asked Philippa is she was safe. Philippa breathed and said nothing but they both knew she heard. When the landlady was about to set the teacup down, Philippa said, yes, she thought so.

"I think, maybe, I might be now. Maybe I was never in danger to begin with." She turned to look at the window over her landlady's shoulder and smiled in a far off absentminded way. "Thank you." said Philippa.

They made their way down the stairs in Robin's home, Philippa carrying a cup of tea she hadn't sipped from and left it in the kitchen. Robin walked her to the front of the door. Philippa looked both ways as she crossed the street and it was now the landlady who stared out of her window. The woman did not ever speak to her more than fifteen minutes ever again. For Robin's part, how would she have known that Philippa had locked the door on her side again? For Philippa's part she crossed the street thankful that someone had asked her a question she was afraid to ask herself and that she answered and believed what she had said. Maybe she had never been in danger at all. In any case she no longer believed she was now.


	2. Chapter 2

Dorcas and Basil made every effort not to run up the street. Dorcas especially had confused many people in her time. You could not tell that her strides were that much longer than her height should have allowed and yet she always seemed to arrive slightly earlier than everyone else even if they started from the same place at the same time. That mixed with the determination of ensuring her friend was safe resulted in her skip walking just short of running made Basil, whose stride did match his height, winded in an effort to match her speed. Even as Dorcas pushed open the back gate she heard a glass break, exploding loudly and then, after mere seconds it took to orient herself, heard another. She broke into a run in the backyard and watched as the back window burst again and repair itself. The shards pieced themselves together as if pulled by tiny threads back into place until they cracked and burst Basil caught up to Dorcas looking back and forth from the window and door assessing what was happening and what she might do about it.

"Me," Basil huffed.

Dorcas looked at him, her eyebrows knit on her forehead, irritated and still very much confused.

"In case intruders. Magic." Huff. "Alarm."

She understood and approached the house with greater resolve. She and Basil went up the small steps and Dorcas raised her wand unlocking the door as it swung open silently into a dark kitchen. They both went through the kitchen and to the hallway where she motioned for Basil to go upstairs. She had done this many, many times before but this felt different. Her training prepared her for a great many things and as confident as she was in her own skill and the training she received to use counter spells, offensive and defensive strategies, all of it, she realized that she was getting weaker. Something in Dorcas now was already failing her. She flinched at the bloom of clean, bluish light that reflected on the glass in the picture frames. She hadn't even noticed how dark it was until the light disappeared completely up the stairs with Basil holding his wand aloft and she squeezed her eyes shut to adjust her eyesight to the dark again. She could have walked in that house blindfolded if she wanted to. She felt ill. Her outstretched arm felt heavy as she rounded the corner to her left into the sitting room passing what looked like a little ceramic volcano puff, puffing away small clouds in sets of twos on the side table in the short hallway. She turned to find her best friend crouched and trembling in the corner and shielding her grandfather who was bunched into the corner but protected on one side by a couch and on the other side an old but well-maintained, upright piano, his granddaughter facing him and telling him that everything was going to be alright. That she wouldn't leave him alone for anything.

"Is there anyone else here?" Dorcas was impressed by the steadiness of her voice and at least seeing Philippa and Grandpa there, some of her focus returned. She could feel the sickness drop away.

Philippa started to hear her friend's voice and slowly looked over her shoulder shaking as she was yet managed to communicate 'no'. Both Dorcas and Philippa turned at the sound of Basil barreling down the stairs, the wand still lit as Philippa and Dorcas squinted against the brightness. Dorcas gestured at the light switch and the house now was full and bright. Basil went to help Philippa off the floor as Dorcas went through the remainder of the house. She could have cast a spell to reveal anyone else's presence but used the time to steady herself. The hand not carrying the wand placed on her breastbone, steadying herself from the inside. Back in the sitting room, she found all of them sitting on the couches. Philippa with her head resting against the wall, eyes closed and breathing deeply. Basil rubbed his face with both hands as if rinsing the exertion off of himself. He would not be an Auror, he decided that evening. Grandpa, sitting next to his granddaughter smiling softly as if nothing had happened at all. Dorcas went to get some water. She hadn't thought to check the fesfium but it confirmed that there were only two wizards in the house. She sent a quiet spell into the house behind her to determine that she was right and when she was certain Dorcas dropped her arm holding what felt like a wand made out of lead and gold and every elephant that ever existed.

She brought the glasses and a pitcher of water into the room.

"Grandpa," she raised her voice slightly, "Everything is fine. We're all safe. Here's some water,"

Philippa winced.

"Can you do something about the glass?"

Dorcas looked at the pitcher on the table and then heard it again. Dorcas hadn't even noticed, it had become background noise. Dorcas motioned for Basil to go to the kitchen and left Philippa on the couch with grandpa who was now leaning against the wall too. From where Dorcas stood she could not see that Philippa and Grandpa were holding hands and because Philippa's eyes were still closed and her head still tilted back against the wall, no one, regardless of where they were standing could see her tears cycling themselves under her eyelids.

"I thought it would be a good idea, a way to let Pippa know when someone magical came into the yard." Basil said in between muttering a spell.

"Good idea, just next time warn me about it, please," Dorcas said, her eyebrows going up to emphasize the point.

Basil shook his head up and down knowing there would not be a next time. Dorcas had been kind enough to take him on "assignment" and his nerves still weren't settled. He had no choice that he was alive during a war but he had a choice to be an Auror and no, thank you. He wasn't too proud but he was too frazzled to mention that his own spell had unnerved him. The loudness of it. Even as the window sat repaired, a still pane, he half expected it to shatter again. If he felt that way, he could not imagine how Philippa must have felt. Basil could do magic and she could not. He had not considered what it meant for a window or anything else to do that and not be able to do much else and it made him sick to think if it hadn't been them. Dorcas seemed to hold up better but she did this for a living. He could tell she was irritated though.

"You are free to go, Basil. Thank you. Please tell Lupin I'm staying here tonight."

Basil felt relieved that he didn't have to stay in the house with the loud windows and the uncertainty. What had made them go there anyway? Just recently it had been such a cozy home and now it seemed empty and eerie. Dorcas watched Basil shut the door behind him.

When Dorcas got back to the sitting room she saw Philippa talking to grandpa from across the coffee table picking up after the dishes Dorcas had just brought in.

"Basil's left," Dorcas said.

"Help me get him upstairs?"

Dorcas shook her head and with a flick of her wand grandpa lifted into the air gentle as a sheet of paper. He started to laugh. Dorcas smiled despite herself. She could feel Philippa looking at her but didn't turn to face her. She walked behind Grandpa who floated up the stairs still laughing. He motioned towards the bathroom door and she sat him gently there closing the door with another small flick of her wrist. When she heard a flush she turned on the water, he washed his hands and he floated out of the bathroom laughing all the while. Dorcas now felt better. Grandpa loved magic. Loved it. And she didn't have to do anything too showy either. In his bedroom she turned her back and with another wave he was changed into fresh pajamas and tucked in bed all of this in a matter of minutes. Grandpa was in peels now, showing his sparse but still strong, white teeth. She turned at the door.

"Goodnight Grandpa. I love you."

"And oo, Dodie," he said and made a little kissing noise after. She could here him snuggling down for the evening and laughing to himself as she went out of the room.

"Crack the door," Philippa called from the bottom of the stairs. Dorcas went down the stairs in two's well pleased with herself.

"Can you sleep here tonight?"

"That was my plan," said Dorcas.

"Are you hungry?"

"No. Are you? I can cook."

"No!" Rounded Philippa and they both laughed even as Dorcas sensed that something wasn't quite right.

Philippa went about setting the water cups and pitcher away, the blanket that had slipped from Grandpa's lap when Dorcas levitated him folded over the back of a chair. Without turning around even as she set the dishes away Philippa asked,

"When we were little, there was a man who sold popsicles down the street from here. What did we call him?" Philippa was moving rather slowly and what a strange question to ask thought Dorcas.

"Ice Pickles? No, Sock Pickles! It was Sock Pickles!" Dorcas hadn't thought of it in so long! Sock Pickles! "Why?", she asked.

Dorcas sensed Philippa relax. She inhaled and exhaled deeply, as if a switch was turned, she moved at regular speed again.

"Sock Pickles, yes. That was it." Philippa nodded to herself and turned with a smile to face Dorcas. "I had forgotten. Help me put this away and then we can go to sleep."

"Enough excitement for one night," said Dorcas. Philippa smiled an automatic, smile. A smile that didn't reach her eyes. Dorcas thought nothing of it, it had been a long night. But everything was fine; they were all fine after all. They tidied the kitchen went upstairs and got ready for bed.

It wasn't until Philippa tucked into her bed on one side of the wall and Dorcas in her bed at the other that Philippa started to say "the lights". By the time she finished the words, they were all already turned off and shortly after saying goodnight, Dorcas was sound asleep. It was as if she had not, even a few hours ago, made herself sick with worry at what she might (or might not) find when she arrived. She was asleep as if she did things like this everyday.


	3. Chapter 3

The birthday party had not only gone off without several incidences but even better than expected. Everyone there had all treated Philippa like their own friend and not the friend of a friend that she actually was to most of them. And while Dorcas did have some reservations once the event was underway, she realized she had had nothing to worry about at all and that Philippa would have fit right in, and did, muggle or not. The morning of their sort of, almost annual birthday party found Philippa more used to the little puffs of odorless smoke popping up from what looked like a little volcano. She was less afraid of the fusfium now and a good thing, since when the party was underway, with all the wizards and witches in attendance, it could no longer chug away in regular intervals and just streamed a thin line of what looked like steam. It made her less nervous now even as she thought she shouldn't get too comfortable with the small device. So far it had only meant new friends and loved ones were near. That a good time was soon approaching or that she would learn something exciting and wild and different.

She was not a jealous person but this was as close to jealousy as she would ever get. She thought with great reverence of all things things Dorcas could do but at the party she had learned more and seen more than ever. A comfort and fluency with magic like it was the plainest thing in the world (and according to Lydia, drunk and getting steadily grumpier over time, magic really was ordinary if you could do it).

Philippa had been to a fair once and had seen a magician. Even as she learned he might have been an actual wizard, what he had done had been total nonsense. In fact, she was certain he hadn't been a real wizard at all. She was certain that Dorcas could move the entire house if she wanted to, just lift it in the air and set it in one quiet piece in a field somewhere or maybe the bottom of the ocean. So far she had made pots and pans fly mostly for Philippa's pure astonishment. For her wide-eyed disbelief. Philippa still waved her hands under floating objects expecting to feel a string or something to hold the object up. She reached out her hand to touch what she once believed were common objects as if to touch a wild but gentle animal. Now a wisp of cloud, now floating in mid air. Did Lupin say that some could be turned into animals? Philippa had declined the demonstration. No, no she didn't want a dish spoon with a tail to squirm away from them to be found slinking in the dark months later and yet…

"A bird? From what?!" She looked around, it seemed they were always in the kitchen then months before everything happened at once, the table covered in notes and books and according to everyone who saw her sitting there while they read, violating every law across the two communities.

"What happens if you violate the statute of secrecy?" She asked Lupin.

"Why are you whispering?" Dorcas retorted who made no effort to conceal her laughter at Philippa's sincerity and fear.

But Dorcas didn't seem to care nor did Lupin, apparently, who brought her all the books he could find or, what did he say? Spirit away. After a time she didn't care either and built up a nerve and curiosity to actually see the magic itself. She could read it, imagine it but here were two capable wizards, why not? What was the harm, really? Surely between them and Fabian they could find a fork-cat wherever it squeezed itself into hiding.

"Throw it into the air," Philippa dared him.

The bowl, before her very eyes, turned into a bird as it fell through the air. Righting itself before it hit the ground and lifting its plain, regular, grey, bird wings.

The bird sat on the edge of the table and turned back into its blue bowl self with hardly a twist of Lupin's wrist.

"Unreal," she whispered to herself.

Lupin enjoyed this more than wandering wherever it was he liked to wander. Well, not more more. He enjoyed that he could do this, impress someone. Especially since the person he most wanted to move and shock was so cavalier about so many things. Philippa and her endless, observant questions that turned into insights she gleaned from her study. He liked testing her ideas. Could that happen? Why hadn't he thought of that? And Dorcas correcting some of his technique. He had never wanted to be an Auror but he appreciated that he could learn something too. Mostly though, he love that the Groves's felt like a proper home. He enjoyed being in a warm house where no one asked him about moon cycles and questioned his bottomless hunger. Philippa really could cook and plied him with dishes and showed that she appreciated him being able to find so many exotic ingredients and they had reached an understanding between them a combination of learning and cooking and him reading to Grandpa Groves from the newspaper and having a backyard to sleep in. Philippa chalked up this behavior to some wizard behavior or convention that she was sure he would explain in time as she gazed out of the window for the upteenth time after she saw a single puff of smoke emanating from fusfium and a tap, tap, tapping on the window signaling that Lupin was making himself comfortable in the yard. She explained that it would be no problem for him to sleep in Dorcas's bed or on the couch but he insisted. She didn't press the point. Frankly she had seen stranger things and some part of her just believed that her desire to be around magic must be matched by his apparent need to live like a muggle hobo. She shrugged going through the house and went to sit in the living room to play piano for Grandpa before bed.

On days when Lupin did stay in the house and they made something of a family, he could show Philippa magic and sensed the unfairness of it, that she gave more than he could give her. After months of studying, Philippa's command of the language and theory of magic increased exponentially. There was a time when he could bring a book and it took her time to understand what the words and ideas in those books meant and at the height of this study, she could polish off several books in a matter of weeks. The line of questions became more obscure, the theory more difficult so that he deferred to Dorcas who later had to defer to Alastor or Kingsley and it went in a massive circle and star all of them collecting information on magic they had never heard of, that they had never thought of doing because they didn't even know if it was possible. She could not do the magic that she dreamt up, magic that she knew so well but, even still he noticed, that the small feats never tired. It was especially this little magic that amused and shocked Philippa the most. The little ceramic chimney did not impress her, the tales of werewolves, Dorcas noticed Lupin developed a coughing fit upon Philippa asking details of magical creatures, were worth only passing commentary.

"Indeed," Dorcas said moving in and out of the kitchen taking care of grandpa. "Water, Remus?"

Philippa yawned through tales of great duels.

"I'm sure it was beautiful in person," interested but unmoved.

It was this, young magic, magic that even little kids could do that made her eyes sparkle. Dorcas for her part was impressed to find that Philippa was the same as she had always been with her nose literally so far in a book that Dorcas convinced herself that Philippa was exaggerating that she couldn't see the words an-

"Glasses! Thats why you've always read like that!" Dorcas exclaimed one day.  
"Why didn't you just say something."

Dorcas drew circles around her friends eyes and said something. What had she said? Philippa felt her eyes squidge in her head and enormous pressure baring down on her forehead and almost on the brink of closing her eyes, the pressure vanished.

"There! I'm not a ward sister but I think that should do it. Is it better?"

And Philippa for the first time in a long time could make out the drawn expression on Dorcas's face.

"Well?", Dorcas pursed her lips and Philippa could see, from where she sat that Dorcas hoped she accomplished the thing she had. She could see the print on the blouse her shirt was held up and rotated her hand and saw the shape of her own fingernails at reasonable fingernail size which is to say at arms length and just unbelievable. She could have cried but was too shocked. She could see Dorcas smile at her and exaggerated nod and then draw her hand across her forehead wiping mock sweat off of her brow.

"Whew! Not to bad for intention, investment, intonation," Dorcas said.

Philippa's eyesight improved at the same time that their knowledge of magic was really taking off. She read about much more in those books and faster. Bones turned to jelly and elongated and frozen at a greater length, A series of incantations to set ceilings on fire from the inside, to block out this, to keep this in and dragons? Real ones?

"Of course," said Dorcas.


	4. Chapter 4

Dorcas derived great joy watching Philippa read these books like they were fairy tales of which they were to her. How would she find a way for her to actually see a dragon in real life? Dorcas wondered. Philippa pieced together words and ideas and shapes and histories. She developed a working knowledge of the things she couldn't use in her own life that were simple to others and literally impossible for her. She began to speak a language with no practical implications to herself.

"Can you make them up too? Spells, I mean.," Philippa said one day without looking up from her notes on her right hand side and writing without looking at the paper on her left. A book with a bowl full of untouched stew used as a weight to keep the pages open. Lupin looking at the stew with longing.

She had always been the far superior student, Dorcas knew. If they had both attended Hogwarts, Dorcas might not even be an auror now. Everyone would have just considered Dorcas to be Philippa's competent but uninspired friend. She could keep pace, memorize, even think on her feet in her way. As it stood, she was one of the better in her class and certainly one of the greatest of the seventh years at the time but, that was only because Lydia had left school early. How unjust that she had everything she wanted but wasn't the more creative of the two, the funnier or more charismatic or kinder? That she only had this gift because of foolish luck?

"These two can you mix them together? And these, could you make one that makes this spin and that leap and that soar at the same time?"

That's how Philippa and Lupin met. Dorcas's potions skills, remained largely underutilized and Dorcas called him in and he had turned into Philippa's tutor of sorts. All of these questions, hours worth, where they would sit and talk about this and that and it got the better of him as it had of Dorcas earlier. He had to try himself. Could these two spells be said at the same time? Can you make that paper burst into flames and float at the same time though? The end result isn't the point, it's the idea! Exasperated Philippa looked over at Dorcas her expression saying, why doesn't he get it? He found he could not do both simultaneously as Dorcas had tried alone so as not to embarrass herself and she too had tried and failed and it was like this with many, many more combinations and spells and ideas until she resolved to practice like she had done in training and found that, this is a muggle equivalent, it was not unlike singing while playing the guitar with both hands while shaking someone's hand with a third. The intention changed in a way and from then on she sat at the table and listened to Philippa's ideas and got over the embarrassment of not being able to do and she failed, Merlin's beard did she ever fail, until she could do a great deal of what Philippa dreamt up and several more that she could not do.

Dorcas thought sometimes that it may frustrate her. That Philippa couldn't do these things herself. That she had to watch other people try and fail and try and fail again knowing that if she had just a little bit of what they had, just a little bit of it, she could have accomplished everything sooner and more elegantly and developed more besides. Instead Dorcas, now long over her fear of being made a fool of in front of someone she had looked foolish in front of several hundreds of times before, tried.

"Does your wrist need to be held differently, it says here that…"

When she finally got it, there was no trace of resentment or impatience or envy. Just her friend pleased and awed, shaking her head silently and smiling, almost to herself only "unreal".

At this party though, her awe extended to the magic she read about that could not have been done in the comfort of the kitchen and dining space in the house that they had grown up in. The childlike magic that Lupin did, the combination spells that Dorcas tried. IT was at this party that she witnessed what she read about in some other radical form that made her suddenly interested in the tales of duels. Philippa herself had walked though a fire drawn at the edge of the door. A great blue flame that reached the top of the door frame and walked though it and nothing happened. Not nothing, how would she describe it? Nothing that a fire could do happened. And it was blue. So it must have been hotter, burning something else, she knew. She had heard pieces of conversations and places and people and things she had never read about. She could admit to herself that some of this magic was becoming commonplace, by my goodness. She could really put her knowledge to use. Combined with the new letters from Lydia (who remained unmoved by Philippa's insistence that they be sent by owl as the Royal Mail had always been and would continue to be faster) and sitting and talking with Lupin who brought the books and the notes and the plants? She reached a type of nirvana and comfort at that party. She had finally found her people. A comfort in her own home and in herself. Who would have known? A witch who couldn't do magic. And then she met a kid named Peter, one of Lupin's friends and they spent time discussing very obscure magic. He could answer some of the questions she had been waiting on answers for. He promised to find an answer to this problem of the bursting window. A way to communicate with Dorcas, he would find a way to call her if she needed to all in exchange for a to-go plate which she would have given to him anyway. And while the party had been beautiful, she hadn't noticed the time passing speaking with him, he had been a complete delight and a sweetheart. Since he had shown up empty handed, he would send a gift through Lupin, he promised, but he had only meant to pass through and got distracted. He had given her the best gift of his complete attention and seriousness to finding a solution to a problem that had been bothering her and she felt a deep fondness for someone whom she had just met.

Sirius? Sirius, right? Lupin's other friend who brought the wine which couldn't be refilled (this was not a foreign concept to Philippa but seemed to confuse many wizards and witches in attendance) made from some berry that she had enjoyed and enjoyed some more. Who else? Lydia and the Prewett's were there of course. Lupin was there. Basil came with a bouquet of roses looking very sheepish but relaxed over time. He too enjoyed the wine. And she finally met Alastor and Mr. Shacklebot and even though she had been told that they were very important, she knew right away when they walked in that important people, celebrated people, had walked in for all the side conversations and commotion they caused. Mr. Shacklebot brought a cake and Alastor a broach that she couldn't touch with her bare hands. He remembered that Philippa wouldn't, or rather shouldn't have known what a Duobus Signis was.

"A type of portkey," Philippa said as if reciting from a book. "It has the power to transport to more than one place. Very difficult to make. You need to the incantation to one place and then another set of incantations for the other, it can takes months to make these. Did the Ministry approve?" She said still marveling at what was an otherwise unremarkable, even ugly piece of jewelry.

Dorcas watched Alastor's eyebrows go to together in a type of uncharacteristic confusion. At Philippa's question, his eyebrows had raised even as she answered her own question.

"I can't imagine they would approve but there's no way to monitor the movement of portkeys anyway." She smiled a warm, genuine smile. "Thank you, it's incredible."

She closed the lid and Alastor regaining enough composure to return the kindness. He looked at Dorcas and she looked like the hippogriff that ate the bezoar, a sly, impressed smile. Philippa, a muggle had caught the great Alastor Moody off-guard. So much for constant vigilance. I'll tell you later she said as Philippa was called away to impress and stun and laugh and dance and become everyone's new best friend and be loved by everyone there. Alastor nodded. He would not hear the end of this. "It is an incredible gift," Dorcas said trying not to laugh but also meaning it but also knowing that he was trying to cover his surprise at who he had been told was a muggle-born muggle. Dorcas was impressed by her friend and proud.

All of these strangers had come to the birthday party and she thought then that they had left as friends. It had been such a good time and Philippa could forget about what happened before and relax and enjoy herself. The memory, the memories were tucked away in the back of her mind but they slept undisturbed as she bounced through the party with Dorcas. Even after she thought of it, which was rarely, it seemed so far away and receded farther away in time but, when she did even after everything that happened, that would happen, she reveled in the memory of the event and the magic of it all. Ha.


	5. Chapter 5

She had been given specific instructions not to trust anyone from her world who didn't know either of their "real names". The irony being that these were the nicknames they had given one another a long time ago when they were young. When, at that age, Philippa recognized they shared last names related to plants and green, growing things. They had built a sort of club with an exclusive, lifetime membership of only two. To get into this club, the only qualifications were that you had to be one of them and your favorite children's radio program had to be White Roses. This made membership easy. She had once been called Petal and her best friend, Tulip. And when they were much older and Tulip had told her, don't trust any of us, not even me, unless they know your real name Petal understood in a deep place and it made her sick to think that there would ever be a need for those names to be referenced and especially in this way. All of this was really happening and, of all of the trouble they had found themselves in over the years, that this was the most real, that one of them may never hear the other's voice or see the other ever again and it would be both a relief and a horror. The family down the street that had disappeared in the papers? That was us, Tulip said. It wasn't you, Petal said. What sat in the air between them was the rest of her question, was it? Was it you? Did you, specifically have anything to do with them? No, it wasn't me, me but it was us. Dorcas said out loud because they had known each other that long and they could have had this entire conversation silently and often did. One or the other would answer questions that hadn't been asked a loud disarming anyone in earshot. The conversation would become silent again neither of them realizing the conversation wasn't being spoken out loud in the first place.

She had not noticed him behind her for almost two blocks now, which is not to say she didn't sense him, but she had felt like this on and off for months now in varying degrees and it was much better than it had been now. She had half a mind to turn around and that same moment she heard, not just her name but, two of them. The first time he had called her by her common nickname. Everyone knew she had called her that and she knew not to turn around but, did anyway. She found a tall man just off the sidewalk directly behind her closer than his voice had sounded. She impressed herself. She knew she did not look as startled as she felt. She turned around as if by coincidence, as if she had just turned around at any number of noises in the street and not her own name but her steps slowed conscious of the very real danger of this man who had magic or not. She squared her hips, laced her keys in her fingers and, if necessary, she would stand at her own door and knock, call up to someone who wasn't there and turn around as she had rehearsed in her mind, two times, nine times, thirty times, a hundred times until it looped on itself, tying into a knot. And yet here she was becoming more scared now as she had been then and it was the recognition and blooming fear she felt on her face that she had not practiced or adjusted for. She did not account for remembering. It was that same fear that told the man that he identified the correct woman even as she walked up the steps to her own home. He repeated in a slightly more confident but not threatening way, excuse me, Petal? And if she had understood what happened then, she would also remember that she had turned around and gone down the steps almost floating and even shook the man's hand and that she had made it up the steps again and unlocked her own door and almost ushered that very man through the door until she came back to her senses at the very last moment over the threshold with her hand on the doorknob and her body angled in such a way that she could have slammed the door shut right on his face.

Grandpa, Philippa and Dorcas sat at the table with tea. Philippa's shoulders drooped as she warmed her hands on the tea cup. Lupin kept quiet vigil with his arms crossed pacing in the small kitchen.  
"What did he look like again?" He repeated.  
Dorcas didn't like the way Philippa looked.  
"That's enough questions for the evening. May I please speak with you in private?"

Dorcas's chair scraped the floor that startled none of them. She pulled him into the hallway and glanced over her shoulder to see that Philippa still hadn't moved. She was watching her tea get cold. Grandpa nearly oblivious to the entire scene with a faint smile on his quiet old, sweet face. She turned around completely and told her friend she would be right here, just off to the side and that, in fact, since it was so late that she would spend the night. Lupin started to make an objection and stopped himself. He too, would spend the night. If Dorcas had still been sitting across from her Philippa, she would have seen her close her eyes. From where they stood, Lupin could see past Dorcas's shoulder. Phillipa exhaled deeply, wrapped her hands around the teacup and brought it to her lips to drink.

Philippa trusted her friend then and honored what she had been told. She let the man into her house because he had called her by her real name. He sat at the kitchen table and she made him tea. She would be getting the news finally of what had happened or at least confirmation for what she knew, what she had known all along.

"Your friend, she's gone. She has died".

She knew that. She had not been prepared to finally have those words spoken out loud by a stranger but, she knew. The man was a little confused to notice her reaction.

Still, she said, a sense of formality in her tone "Thank you for letting me know".

He had understood that they had been very close. He decided against telling her what had happened unless she asked. She decided that she did not need to know the details. When it had happened, how. It was all the same now.

"Your home is very cozy." The man said looking around the flat.

"It is." She said looking directly at him.

It was time for him to go but there was something bothering him and she could tell, maybe he wanted to tell her more. She could tell he was determining what to say and how to say it even as he started speaking .

"I don't want to know".

He smiled more to himself. "I don't want to give you any more information than you would like to know or that would take away your peace."

"Thank you."

"If I could ask you? I would like to know one thing."

That evening when she had been sent away, she had been given a long list of instructions. Her going away bag was now several times smaller than when she had packed it herself. She was given instructions on who she could and could not and should not speak to and how to tell all of these people apart but not when the danger would pass. She was not told when and how she would know when the threat lifted and when she could go home or if she ever could. She knew that this was for her own safety. She had reasoned that maybe she would be told by one of these many people. But she knew also that if anything were to ever happen to Dorcas… She understood people's priorities. She understood that she may not be one of those priorities with her friend gone. Many people had however tried to find Philippa precisely for that reason, because they were friends. As it turned out many more people considered Dorcas a friend and that they too honored their friend's instructions.


	6. Chapter 6

Dorcas woke up with a series of knots on the right side of her neck. She had seen a man crack his skull during whichever series of spells that had been cast in his direction. Part of a wall had been torn down and trapped others underneath it and, this time, Alastor had not been there to hold it up. She had seen people die before but not like this. Not this many people at once. No one seemed nearly as disturbed as she felt. She pictured the man falling and that she could hear him even if she would have been too far. The sound of his head hitting the floor. She heard it. Her memory had the right noise at the right place. And the number of people under the wall- She decided fairly early in her training to do more harm than good and this confirmed that choice. She could not live with the idea that she could be so cavalier, so unintentional with her magic. That she would send a spell flying off and hurt someone that way and she didn't have to because she had not. The man floated in the air and Emmeline let him fall. She was already onto the next spell, the next person. It was only the spell that Dorcas cast too late and that someone on the man's side caught his foot and angled his body so he fell with the top of his spine and head hitting the floor first not from a great height but was loud enough for Dorcas to hear from across the hall.

Dorcas went downstairs to find Emmeline eating a jam sandwich and speaking with Edgar at the table.

"Morning." Chipper as she could manage, as if nothing had happened.

"Sleep well did you?" Edgar asked over a plate of late breakfast.

"Not really." Dorcas admitted. The color of the jam made Dorcas crane her neck.

"It will get better," he said. He nodded to emphasize as if her expression had betrayed her. It had. He was talking about the crick in her neck.

He had never experienced this but he saw it in other people. Same with Emmeline. She didn't think ill of Dorcas, though she didn't like her, or even that she wasn't a fighter, she was, she saw it but she worked too much on the defensive. The people they were fighting called for offensive strategy, to be proactive and to approach each event with the same and equal amount of energy, as she had said during a briefing. Dorcas thought the word she had meant to use was violence. She didn't approach to hurt anyone, Emmeline claimed when one of these briefings had devolved, as they more recently had, into loud shouting matches. Sirius and her at each others throats. Sirius being the only one who disliked her for the same aristocratic upbringing that he himself had. Emmeline insisted that the point was always to disarm or slow down the opposing side but Dorcas witnessed as much "energy" from her as anyone else. She witnessed a man lose consciousness, his coat collar squeezing at his neck, blocking his inability to say the counterspell to let him loose. A piece of window flying at a foul speed lodged in someone's chest that insisted, by magic, that it make it through to the other side of this body which it did until it sought out another and then another. Then this. This one. Dorcas craned her neck mashing at her shoulder. Edgar gazed at her and felt a deep affection for Dorcas. She really was sweet. He continued to look at her standing there, her very obvious desire to just be around other people as a distraction while she gazed into the air not paying attention to anything in particular still trying to fix the soreness in her neck and her neck getting more sore for her trouble. He went back to his meal, smiling at his food. Emmeline caught him looking at her. It was a second. It was nothing really. He looked up, smiled and returned to his food smiling even harder.

"Your neck, is it alright?" Dorcas didn't answer. They both looked at her.

"Dorcas," Emmeline said irritated. Edgar looked at her.

She really could be like this sometimes. He knew that and made a type of peace with it. Dorcas looked at them, Emmeline's eyebrows raised in inquisition. Had they said something? She couldn't have told you what it was or how long she'd been standing there.

"Your neck, Dorcas?" Emmeline must have repeated the question. Dorcas nodded and walked away realizing she hadn't actually said anything.

"I'm going to lay down." She smiled in an absent-minded way.

Dorcas bumped into a wall on her way back up the stairs where she went straight to the bathroom. From downstairs, they could hear the sound of the water heater creaking to life refilling the pipes that would fill the tub. After what felt like an hour, Edgar eating slower than usual to not have to meet Emmeline's gaze, the faucet went off. Upstairs the tub had been expanded in several direction so that Dorcas could submerge herself and stare through several inches of water above her.

His plate cleared, nearly licked clean, he looked at Emmeline saddened. And she knew what it meant, what it could mean, that sappy puppy look. Which was absurd! This tall, huge-shouldered, muscular man really had some nerve to allow his face to ever attempt to look like anyone's baby anything! That wouldn't work! Anyway, Dorcas was a damn goody-two robes. She wouldn't dare in a million years and for all the world. Emmeline had half a mind to call her a weakling though she knew it wasn't true. She understood why Alastor and Dorcas got along, they would stop a battle to help the helpless, block or rebound a spell before casting one of their own (she knew that to block a spell one would have to be cast but that was not the point).

Emmeline's mind raced. Churned. Dorcas really hadn't even looked at Edgar like that. She had barely noticed either of them and Edgar's smile had no effect on Dorcas the way it did on h-. Hmm, she thought. Dorcas wouldn't but he very much would. How did she know that? She wondered. She snorted to herself. She looked up to catch him glancing up at her and smiling sweetly and it made her sick and angry.

"Why don't you check on her in the bath? Ask if you can rub her shoulders?" she questioned. His smile widened one side then the other.

"Why would I do that knowing how angry it would make you, my love? Why don't I rub your back instead?" he said in between clearing the table, raising his eyebrows in a rhythm. It made her angrier. He really thinks he is so adorable.

"She's not my type." Edgar said facing the sink, his back turned to Emmeline while he waved his wand to start doing the dishes.

"Which is?" Lies from Merlin's dusty beard! She wanted to see his face when he said that.

"Kind, sweet, easily disturbed…"

"She's a mouse." Emmeline snapped loudly. Dorcas didn't hear her, underwater as she was. Alastor hadn't heard her, on watch as he was. Alice Longbottom, didn't care as pregnant as she felt. Her husband didn't mind as smitten with Alice as he was. Lupin didn't either, sleeping as he was. Sirius had already woken up but planned on insisting on telling her later to not wake the house when she knew how busy it had been for all of them the evening before ready to argue as he was.

Edgar's chuckle caught him off guard. A dish plopped back into the soapy water in the sink. She really was angry. He turned and walked to the table, kissed her on the cheek.

He wouldn't dare.

"I wouldn't dare." he said lowering his voice in earnest and in contrast to Emmeline's voice moments before.

He couldn't. Dorcas didn't look at him twice and she was very easily disturbed, that was true, and his hands were tied, Emmeline made sure of that. Truth was, Dorcas was very much his type but the position had been filled. Emmeline, too, was his type and, well, she wasn't going anywhere and wouldn't let him act up any more than he did. Emmeline would keep him honest, so to speak and they both left the matter at the table and when he said he wouldn't dare, she knew he was telling the truth because for as much as a mouse as she believed Dorcas to be, she knew and saw the day before that she wasn't stupid and, even worse, that Dorcas, fortunately or unfortunately for Emmeline, wasn't at all that desperate.


	7. Chapter 7

He had seen something like this before. Lord Voldemort paced around the room still heated by the fire on the hearth. He was always slightly chilled now. His body temperature needing greater warmth even as his disciples used all sorts of magic to prevent themselves from sweating, to keep themselves composed under the literal heat. That didn't matter so much now. Some of these people could not feel the cold or the heat anymore and would not feel it, or anything else, ever again. He had been angry that time and he somehow contained his anger but what he felt now passed out of time and collected into a deadly rage. I cannot tell you how angry or what the color of it was but the general shape looked like many bodies on the floor. Very many. He had let them fall and fall and fall.

He had had to see this for himself. He had paced around the hall as he did this room surveying the wreckage. This one folded under him or herself, this one's bone sticking out of there. Someone would clean it up and it wouldn't be him. He had scrubbed enough floors in his time and coupled with this smell? He hated this smell. That was the worst of all. He could barely think when he first walked in with Bellatrix, Severus and Rozier. It took seeing what happened to refocus his thoughts. This one on the floor with his brains blown out of the back of his head jammy and stinking. There was tile piled on one side of the room. Dorcas had made the floor move under them. Lord Voldemort smiled to himself. They might have slipped, become disoriented but someone had killed this one on the floor on purpose. Who was he? He sustained a low murmur that the four of them ignored. He wasn't dead then? People like this man were making him look bad! What business did this nameless nobody have in this fight in the first place? It could have been anyone responsible for the dozen or so people later pulled out of this hall with its tall ceilings out of the rubble. The muggles' families would have to be alerted. A release for the muggle news. Dorcas had created an environment in which to do all of this. That's what they thought at least. Lord Voldemort knew better. She was hardly the reason all of these people had died and yet for all of this chaos, he recognized that she threatened his plans. That incident earlier had probably made her sick and to the best of his knowledge she had never done anything like it before and had not since. He had ordered that she be brought in then. Yet not one of all the people he had sent on his direct orders had come back with her. He had heard her name several times before that moment but, until then, had no occasion to remember it until one day, for whatever reason, he did.

"That name sounds familiar." He thought, mining his memories and accurately placing its previous uses. He kept hearing her name over again. He heard her first described as "Moody's girl", then "the mudblood" which Severus made a grand show of not doing. Ha! So dramatic. And, very occasionally and briefly, she was referred to by her last name and then finally "the Auror". When she died, they had believed the threat had passed. They had even brought out a bottle of a sweet, magical wine from the Malfoy's collection (really, it had most likely come from the Black family as a wedding gift or dowry). Lord Voldemort opened it himself. They believed that he would be happy? What did they think, those who still could, those who were still alive? What did they think would happen?

Severus knew from the very first toast that something would happen and he couldn't wait to witness some people getting their due even as he mapped out a plan of protection in his head. His Lordship insisted on opening the ancient bottle of Satiativa. An ancient vintage. Ancient. This should have tipped them all off but alas. His Lordship had to handle it with a serviette wrapped around the neck of the bottle just so as was tradition, preserving the dust. An empty bottle would cost a small vaults worth of equally ancient currency and he would enjoy the drink immensely. Sip on what only a few wizards could only dream of tasting if they even knew it still existed. It would be a good one. The finest, thinnest stemmed cordial glass appeared in front of each of them at the table. When the cork popped it released not only the pressure in the bottle but the remaining tension in the room. They were safe, they thought, as Lord Voldemort poured into the slightly larger cut glassware in front of himself. The glasses around the table filled simultaneously. He set the bottle down gently. The auror is dead. Dorcas Meadowes is dead. Finally. Severus could feel everything and everyone around him, the relief. He learned long ago that this was a sham of a feeling. He learned a long time ago that an exhalation is done in private, that someone is only safe if they are asleep and sometimes not even then. How do you really know if someone is asleep? How do you know if they aren't just playing dead? Lord Voldemort lifted his glass and all in attendance lifted their glasses in unison. Some people were smiling. Some had tears in their eyes. Joy? Severus looked up at Lord Voldemort from his seat on His right. Regulus across from Severus. Bellatrix diagonal from her nephew, same proximity as Severus but on Lord Voldemort's left hand side.

"A toast!"

There it was. There it was! Severus felt what was a largely imperceptible shift in tone, in inflection. He knew that set-up. He personally had done nothing wrong and he knew his Lordship would not do anything to him but there were reflective surfaces in the room. A spell could bounce off of so many polished things here. Some spells could go through another person and his Lordship was nothing if not precise and elegant but Severus heard it, he felt it. He saw it in his Lordship, he heard it in those two words. Severus could drop under the table and start incantations if he needed to and would explain it away later. But now, he would wait. He would know the time to move. He always knew the time to move, he was still here after all. Still alive.

"A toast to…"

He was angry and here these sops were smiling, grinning away, elated. Maybe Snape wouldn't hide under the table. He might die happy knowing that these half-wits were stripped of their histories. He might enjoy to watch it.

"Regulus!"

Regulus Black inclined his head slightly and slowly as Lord Voldemort enumerated on the toast. He learned fast, Severus had to credit him for that. It never crossed his mind that he was an excellent teacher. That the gesture was copied as Regulus had seen Severus do it. That the gesture, the body language was all Severus.

"To Regulus!" They all affirmed.

They lifted their glasses to sip. And it was perfect. They didn't, they couldn't make anything like this anymore. Severus went through the list of ingredients in his head as he savored the light, green, sparkling sweetness; the slightly, piney astringency. He would be satisfied with the memory of having tasted something, anything with belbarberries. He went over the process for extracting and stilling the juices as described in an old text. The fermentation taking years and the vintage, theorized to be stable forever if made correctly. If not, it could kill a cast of hippogriff dead with a few drops. Those drops were said, per another primary observational text written during the experiments conducted before the ministry existed, even before the " olde vvitch coda", to be so divine, so transcendent that for centuries there was a time when wizards and witches brewed it incorrectly just to taste, just to try it and it was through this that the plant was harvested to extinction and made the correctly prepared wine (really a potion) so rare and expensive. This also wiped out an estimated tenth of England's wizarding population, a point of history still taught, with gusto, in France.

Severus sipped again leaving a remainder and felt the bubbles break up his thoughts and piece them back together in a lighter hue. When he set down his glass again, the goblet portion of the glass filled slowly as did everyone else's at the table according to how much they drank. All of them well-bred, or well-read, enough to know to leave a little left over, that their glass would be refilled from the large bottle at the table if they left a little in their own glasses and when that was gone there would be no more.

Severus knew he would not have to scramble under the table like a fool. Regulus now knew that too. He too could now sense the shift in Lord Voldemort's voice as He raised His glass to toast the next person. And from Severus he knew that he would be safe and spared whatever was approaching in the invisible, blood-filled storm cloud conjured by Lord Voldemort's voice if only he just sat quietly and very still.


	8. Chapter 8

"Tell her. If anything happens to me".

If they weren't direct friends of Dorcas, they were friends of friends of friends who loved the person before them enough to uphold what became a long line of people who needed to pass on the information to a woman named Petal until the line of people became so long that people carrying it did not know or had not been told how important the name was. That calling this woman by this name was crucial information and not a misunderstanding or incidental information. There were a strange number of very skilled, highly trained, over competent wizards and witches who took on the responsibility to find this woman and yet only one had. It was only by coincidence that the man now sitting at her kitchen table had taken it upon himself not out of love for the people around him but as a point of curiosity. Why could they not find this one person? This one person didn't have magic of her own. Or did she? Did she? Why had no one ever considered the possibility? Had they? Yet it was a coincidence, the most common magic, one not under the direct control of wizards, and as unwieldy and unpredictable in the hands of muggles, that he had found her.

Alastor knew that Philippa had the portkey now because Dorcas had told him. He was the second person after Lupin who had been told directly to go find Philippa, in case. Dorcas at this time was avoiding Alastor because he needed her to go into hiding for her safety. That was when it started. No, it actually started sooner than that but she was avoiding him because she didn't want to listen to whatever new argument he had come up with in the space of time that she made herself scarce but this was urgent and important. She told him that she didn't want to discuss anything else but what to do if something were to happen to her. You know what Philippa looks like, she knows you. That she had told Lupin also. Find her and tell her.

Lupin had been told because Dorcas knew then that he had the skill and that he knew all of England's dark and light places. If Lupin couldn't find her, Alastor would but they couldn't. So Lupin told Peter who he knew also loved Philippa and could be trusted and could fit into small places. Alastor told Edgar and both tried until, well. Edgar had told his sister, Amelia who had also been at the party and knew what she looked like, though hadn't stayed long enough to speak with her. After the death of her brother, she became obsessed with trying to find this woman she barely knew and she also told Emmeline who already knew because, of course she did. Emmeline told Kingsley because she didn't have anyone else to tell and Kingsley told Lydia who had been worried since she had stopped receiving letters from Philippa and had her own recent letters forwarded back to her. So she told Prisha who told Daniel. Lydia also told a ward sister at St. Mungo's and that sister told two other people one of whom was actually a sister of the ward sister. And it was through one of these people that he first heard Philippa's name. And then he too, eventually was asked by both Alastor and Kingsley directly which was strange. He found very many people were looking for this woman and he wanted to know why they couldn't find her. He was very busy collecting memories and trying to find a way to win a war that he believed might be unwinnable but something told him to find out why, that this would reveal something to him or not, and he always listened to this voice. It was this same voice that led him to sit through a radio program about a garden of talking flowers years ago that he found delightful. He had stood and listened to the whole program having caught it near the end and then heard it again and this program was a comfort during a particularly exhausting time in his life and this voice told him to find the name of the program and he had forgotten it.

One of these wizards had called the woman before him Dorcas's sister. But Dorcas hadn't any sisters. No brothers. Really, no family to speak of which is what made her good at her job or that's what the rumor was. She had nothing or very little to lose. The woman in front of her being one of them. He had to follow her from work several times. He knew this is where she stayed, he knew that he would have to approach her carefully and as was his way, he spoke to the old channels and also by coincidence and a stroke of luck her old nickname since in another stroke of luck, no one had told him directly to call her Petal. That would have been easy. He didn't like easy. He didn't trust easy. Once a long time ago he thought something could be so simple and it broke what remained of his family and that dovetailed into breaking a lot of other people's homes because of what he thought he understood. Now? There had been a radio playing when he first saw her. She had smiled and hummed along with the tune walking past him from the hospital. She hadn't heard the show in such a long time, neither had he.

Philippa would have pretended to be someone else which in fact happened once. He had called her name and she had pretended she was someone else. Dorcas' instructions were simple. If Philippa didn't recognize the person, they were not to be trusted. If they wore these symbols they were not to be trusted. If they spoke this and on and on and on and since their last meeting to now she had forgotten many of the details and was comfortable now to live, to wander, to be. The threat it appears had passed, until he showed up. She hoped the rest of her life wouldn't be this and them forever. But one cannot not know. Or maybe she could ask this man? How he could not know this information, that they weren't sisters, but know what to call her did not cross her mind. She was aware near the end that Dorcas must be powerful. She witnessed someone half bow to her once on their way out and thought this not only excessive but funny until she learned the details. She always wanted to know the details. Not this time. What she did not know was that this man was also powerful. He was even more skilled than his friend and that was the only reason he was there.

"When did you come back here?" He asked.

This man asked a lot of agitating questions. Hadn't he said he just wanted to ask one question? He sounded like a social worker and this irritated her enough to dull some of her fear and its familiarity compelled her to answer. The social workers at the hospital were worn down but they asked questions to understand so they could help. Maybe he was something of a social worker?

"Months," This is not the answer the man expected, Philippa could tell.

"I thought you said you lived in Ireland."

"No, thats where I was moved, relocated. I might have been there for only a matter of days before I came back into the country." She avoided using the proper terminology. She was tired.

Those days had been very long which accounted for the lapse in her judgement of time. but everyone she was supposed to meet, everyone she encountered did their job. She was fed then moved and then told she could sleep here and move there and take this with you and talk to this person. Days? It had been more than two weeks. Her mind consolidated the time out of necessity. The man asked for more tea and while she had not seen this man take a sip, the cup was empty before she reflexively moved to get more. Instead she stayed seated.

"I know who you are."

"You do?"

"I don't know exactly, but I know what you might be capable of doing and that you don't need me to get a cup of tea, to have my back turned or anything like that, so even though you don't need to tell me I'd like to know why you're here and to tell you to leave." Everything Philippa said came out in one long sentence.

The man smiled, "I'm not here to hurt you." He replied.

"That's not what I said." Philippa did not smile.

"I'm here to tell you about your friend"

"And you have. Yes, i think its time for you to go now."

.He bowed his head gently. Philippa noticed his teacup was full again but didn't notice when he had filled it again.

"I will leave but i would like to know the timeline also. I'm afraid I have not been completely honest with you. You see, many people have tried to find you and tell you and none of them, including me initially, could even find you to let you know. If you have been here all along, I'm trying to understand how this could be." He certainly did work for a social service. The even tone in his voice, his patience. She understood how some of her patients felt during such a soft-tempered interrogation. She wanted to roll her eyes.

Philippa considered all of the people trying to find her and couldn't because of some reason or another. All of the potential reasons she could imagine, she wanted their source to go away, to vanish as if by. She wanted to laugh and cry at the same time because of the thought.

She took a steady deep inhalation and answered, "I went to Ireland via portkey. I moved around and I came back into the country using the same portkey and moved and moved and moved and lived with someone shortly and that person helped me find a flat, this one where I have been almost two months. There it is." She unloaded this information on the same exhalation out and she felt lighter.

Had she said portkey? How? He would investigate later. He could tell she was getting tired. News moved very quickly during a war not all of it was accurate but the fact that Dorcas had been killed was accurate. It was known that Lord Voldemort was looking for Dorcas and had killed her. That was also accurate. Once the news had been discovered, confirmed the Order of the Phoenix was informed, what was left of it, and that news spread through the allied channels and in days maybe a week at the most, someone was looking for Philippa and no one had stopped. There might be someone looking for her right now and she had been in England for months and this flat for weeks at least.

"Thank you, Ms. Groves." The man said instead.

Then she felt it. It felt like a small knock on the door of her mind. She was suddenly in a smaller house on the inside side of the door and she knew the man was standing on the other side and that she could open the door or not. She did not. It was better than last time. At least he knocked, she thought.

He had never encountered anything like this. He didn't know muggles could do this at all. He only tried to make his job faster but instead of wandering around in her mind he had encountered a door made out of lead. He had to knock and from his side he saw a little sliding gate with her eyes peering through and she scrutinized him looking him up and down and her eyes registered a type of displeasure or disgust. When the little door was slid shut he found himself back in the kitchen again. Again, he thought, she is not a confirmed muggle. And yet could a muggle also be an occlumens? This was occlumency (wasn't it?) but he had never experienced it this way. And again, he didn't think it on the top layer of his mind but deep down in the wells of knowing himself a little jet that moved the currents of who he was. You can't even tell if she's a witch or a muggle. You recognize a part and not the whole. You need more information. Said differently, he appreciated that this would not be easy. Reading her thoughts would have been easy. He understood something else that day about people and, though small, he would add it to the small ball of hate he nurtured for himself that he watered occasionally in the hopes of growing a garden of sorts. Instead, and someday soon he knew, it would melt into sludge that would coat every corner of his life until he couldn't live with himself or the war ate them all whole. Sludgey corners and all.

"It's time for you to go now."

Did she understand what had happened, he wondered?

"Good day Mr.-" she said as she got up from the table. She did not know his name. He had in fact told her while she was walking in but she did not remember it nervous yet reassured as she was.

"Albus. Dumbledore." The man said getting up from the table. Outstretching a hand that she did not take.

Not these ridiculous names again, thought Philippa. She wouldn't let herself be bothered by what had just not happened. She needed to get him out of the house and he knew that. He dropped his hand and took no offense to this knowing what he had tried and failed to do and also feeling no shame in having tried.

"Ms. Meadowes, she was very talented. A very good witch. Dorcas was an excellent witch."

They were at the door now. Philippa had not been prepared to hear Dorcas' name in past tense. That is what hit her. That's what drew the tears to her eyes and set them sparkling in her face. And the witch part, she did not care one way or another.

"She, she valued friendship and goodness. She. Thank you." Philippa opened the door.

"Thank you for everything you've told me today, Ms. Groves. Would you like me to visit again?"

"That won't be necessary Mr.- Sorry, what was it?"

"No need to apologize. Albus." He said as he surveyed the door frame slightly distracted. He turned on the other side and smiled a thinned, wan smile. He tipped a hat on his head that Philippa hadn't notced him carrying. He lighted down the steps looking both ways as he crossed the street with his long legs, like a determined spider. He did look back over his shoulder a glance at the building and not at her, the smile was gone replaced by the look of concern and intensity he had while studying the door. She watched him walk in the direction of the hospital until he was part of the crowd and she stood there closing the door gently behind her.

"No one could find you." She had been protected all along and felt some frustration which would come later in feeling that she had wasted all that time afraid for nothing.

It seemed unfair that someone could bring that much sadness into a room, into a house and then leave without looking over their shoulder at her. She understood she told him not to come back but he could have asked, en route, out of the door, "are you okay with all of that?" Even if he hadn't waited for the answer. Maybe he wasn't a social worker after all.

Philippa opened a small door in the kitchen and shut the door behind her she pushed on a wall and it opened up silent to another small hall which she crawled into. She went down this hall and opened up to the space between the flats. This space had originally been used as a space to get to the outside windows easier for cleaning. It had been repurposed during a war to keep the neighbors of the flat in communication and access to each others homes to hide in if there were raids. The landlady, Robin would have told her this if Philippa had asked. Philippa went up a steep flight of steps and knocked on a door even smaller than the one she'd gone through. She opened the door to a furnished space. She went through the flat and down a flight of carpeted steps where she ran into her landlady, the person she wanted to speak with. This was not an emergency but she really needed someone to talk to.


	9. Chapter 9

"A man visited me today." The old woman's body froze.

"No, I'm fine. I mean. He came to tell me that my friend. My friend has died." The woman relaxed and also saddened reached over to hold the younger woman's hands in her own.

"I'm so sorry."

"I knew but someone just came with the news. This was the emergency."

"How?"

The old woman's face betrayed the question and so reflexive is this question that Philippa heard it though the woman did not speak the words. It's so strange that people ask this and yet she wanted to know. We all always want to know.

Philippa doubled over. "Peacefully. Quietly." She chanted to herself. Maybe there was magic there, too. Maybe by saying it enough times, it would be true. Philippa hoped it was. She wanted to say Dorcas died in her sleep. She died an even older woman than you but really she knew. If Dorcas lived as an auror, as a member of the Order maybe it wasn't peaceful but, it was good enough to think it had been. That's not what the old woman had meant. That's not the "how" the old woman was asking. Robin meant how did Philippa know her friend was gone. But not only did she not press the matter further, Robin let the young woman cry silently.

Philippa felt something had lifted but, for all the feeling of lightness and sadness and resignation, her feet carried her past her flat and as far away in the opposite direction that the man had gone. She would not and did not think about Dorcas or the man or the news he brought or anything else. When she was ready and after her walk, she would return home as she had.

Philippa would never say in her head what Dorcas was which became easier and easier as the old, sad parts began to break up and evaporate and leave mostly only the good parts. Philippa lived to be an old woman, past the age of her very old landlady who lived stunningly long for no other reason that she still wanted to be there in case Philippa ever did come back. Philippa would die warm in the comfort of her bed falling into a gentle, deep, dreamless sleep and then falling further into the greatest stillness, her family asleep in the other rooms (and what a full and happy, beautiful family it was). Up to that very moment from the day that she met the man and all through the next war, which she knew involved wizards and magic, aurors, dragons, witches, potions, spells all kept hidden behind the thin veil of what she knew was called the Statute of Secrecy, Philippa would never mention her friend or say Dorcas' name out loud again for the rest of her life.


End file.
